The Anglo-Saxon World (The Modern Scholar)

What a pleasure to listen to this series of lectures! Drout covers the history of the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes, beginning with their migration into Britain. Drout’s love for this culture really shines through, and his excitement is both genuine and contagious. If his goal was to teach history, he succeeded; if his goal was to get people excited, well, he succeeded there, too. A few of the events he described were things I’d read about before, but he put a unique spin on them. For example, I had already read about the custom of passing a lyre around a hall so that people could take turns singing. But Drout made me laugh when he described this as “Medieval Karaoke Night” and then added the disclaimer, “I am not making this show more up.” What a fun way of looking at it! It’s so lovely when the author’s personality shines through.

He describes different facets of Anglo-Saxon life, from the extreme amount of labor that was involved in making a book, to the relatively poor living conditions of the masses, to the king who lamented that most of his people never bothered to learn a language other than English. Drout tells of the heroes and the idiots who shaped the course of British history, and he traces the development of certain ideas and practices across the centuries. He traces the fall of this culture, which was conquered and, in many respects, completely destroyed by William.

My two favorite elements of this lecture series are both literary. I enjoyed learning about King Alfred, who pushed for books in the vernacular, who fostered increased literacy among his subjects and his court, and who worked as both translator and author. And I absolutely adored Drout’s in-depth look at a variety of works of literature. Not just Beowulf—although that is, of course, the subject of one lecture—but also many of the great works of that period. “The Wanderer,” “The Seafarer,” “Judith” (he uses the phrase “Braveheart speech” to describe this warrior woman), religious poetry, wisdom poems, “The Dream of the Rood,” King Alfred’s writings, and more: Drout paints a vivid portrait of these and other writings, and he offers in-depth literary analysis. As if that weren’t enough, he also reads from these texts in the original Old English, which is such a beautiful and melodic language.

All in all, highly informative. A well-rounded picture of many different elements of this particular history and culture. show less